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Tag: video recordings

Border Patrol was slapped with sanctions for destroying evidence that was part of an ongoing civil lawsuit.

American AlJazeera reports that Judge David C. Bury issued the sanctions Monday in a case involving three immigrants who allege Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector routinely held immigrants in inhumane conditions.

“The Court concludes the destruction of the video-tape recordings made prior to this Court’s August 14, 2015, Order was, at best, negligent and was certainly willful. Defendants provide no explanation why, in response to Plaintiffs’ notifications regarding litigation, the Defendants did not undertake the efforts initiated in response to the Court’s August 14 Order,” Bury wrote.

The sanctions require Border Patrol to produce all existing video from the Tucson Sector since June 10.

Overturning an FBI policy that is as old as the bureau, the Justice Department is now requiring the FBI in most cases to make audio or video recordings while interrogating suspects in custody, the Arizona Republic reports.

Since the FBI’s creation in 1908, agents have been barred from making audio recordings of suspects without special permission.

“This policy establishes a presumption that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the United States Marshals Service (USMS) will electronically record statements made by individuals in their custody,” says the memo from James M. Cole, deputy attorney general, to all federal prosecutors and criminal chiefs.

“This policy also encourages agents and prosecutors to consider electronic recording in investigative or other circumstances where the presumption does not apply,” such as in the questioning of witnesses.